I was born in the wrong place, possibly at the wrong time, definitely to the wrong family.

Somewhere there is a person who belongs.

Somewhere there is someone who would connect with those people, who could be this person that I’m supposed to be, proud and unashamed.

I am not that someone.

Somewhere there must be a person who feels this place down to the core of their being, and has a sense of home that I have never had here, and never will. Someone misses these people, having never met them, thinks like them, feels like them, is one of them. Someone wishes they were here.

There must be someone, somewhere, like that. There has to be.

There has to be a person who doesn’t feel alien under their skin, who isn’t out of place in every situation, someone who doesn’t feel the need to apologise for their very existence.

That person should’ve been, not me.

Maybe I just have the wrong soul. Perhaps it’s defective, scarred in some way, just slightly out of true.

If I’d just let them shave a little off here and there, I probably would’ve fit right in. They certainly wanted to. They certainly tried.

I might’ve been happy, if I’d never known how miserable to be. My ignorance might’ve purchased normality, as surely as my silence has bought me survival.

Instead I am floating inside myself like a stranger in my own life, eternally at odd angles, a bit out of sync, a prisoner in this life I never asked for.

Ultimately, I’m just a forgotten place-holder for someone who never really existed. I am my own stunt double, gone wrong.

This is all I will ever be. I will never be other than I am, and it will never be enough.